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As you are publishing the "Horesh" family tree I thought your readers might be interested in how we found the grave of my paternal grandfather, Ezra Horesh, who was born in Baghdad in 1850.
A devout and orthodox Jew he emigrated from London about 1930 for Palestine as it was his wish to be buried there. He was buried on the Mount of Olives 29th Adar 1938, aged 90.
We were worried that the grave had been desecrated by the Jordanians during their occupation. So about 1992 we started making enquiries and eventually made a search. The problem was enormous because originally we did not know the exact date of death. Furthermore, the burial registers do not show the location of the graves, there are no row numbers and graves are not dug in chronological order.
We were told it was an impossible task as there were some 10,000 graves in just the most likely section of the Mount of Olives.
We persevered with our enquiries and in October 1997 I was accompanied by my son, Michael, Shlomo Bendahan (with pistol as the area was dangerous) and a Mr Zevulun Erez who had a considerable knowledge of the cemetery, and we proceeded to the Mount of Olives. Mr Erez said "We will start here" and within ten minutes he had found the grave, which was in perfect order. Unfortunately we could not gather a minyan but a Hashcabah was said.
The grave was in an area which had not been desecrated, but from about three metres to the left the whole area had been destroyed. Had my grandfather been buried about two years later then his grave would have been destroyed.
The following is the text engraved on the tombstone:
London
Joshua Stanley Horesh
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